Well, Omar Minaya made the flight across the country, gave his vote of confidence - if a cautious one - for Willie Randolph and then settled down to get a first-hand view of what is going on with this team.
Maybe now he knows why Randolph is struggling along a path of mediocrity.
He saw Marlon Anderson, only in the game because both Ryan Church and Moises Alou are already injured, pull up with a strained left hamstring. Then he saw Oliver Perez hand out a career-high - who would have thought this number wasn't double-figures? - eight walks (he gets extra points for doing it in just five innings).
And then he saw Randolph hand the ball to Billy Wagner in the ninth after the Mets had pushed their way to a 5-4 lead. Sure thing, right? After all, Wagner hadn't given up an earned run this season and after he got the first out, up came Matt Holliday, who was 0-for-3 with three strikeouts in his career against Wagner. Sounds like pretty good managing to me.
But Wagner of course, served up a first-pitch home run over the center field wall to send the game into extra innings. It's still going on as I type this. I don't have the heart to wait until it's over and delivery what just seems destined to be more bad news if things are continuing the way they are trending.
Anyway, here's the story on Omar.
He gave him a vote of confidence. Sort of.
After gushing about how he traveled across the country to show his support for Willie and ownership's support for Willie, he was asked directly if Randolph was in imminent danger of losing his job.
“I’m going to tell you that Willie Randolph is our manager,” Minaya said. “He has my support. He has our ownership’s support. And that’s what it is. To me, that’s what I’m going to tell you. I am here to support Willie. Ownership is supporting Willie. We’re supporting everything.
“Hopefully
one of the reasons I’m here is to let him know my support and let him know and
encourage him and let him know that we believe he can get this team on track,
get this team playing to the capabilities it can play. I know Willie’s totally
dedicated to doing that, and I believe Willie will do that.”
He didn't believe it hard enough to tell you that Randolph would not be replaced. But for now, all the pain that Randolph had was on the field.
I thinks it's pretty much indisputable that bringing in Wagner for the 9th was good managing. Unfortunately it turned out to be one of those times when the ideal player in the ideal situation didn't get the job done.
What I think was bad managing was allowing Oliver Perez to take the mound for the 6th inning. I am one who has applauded Randolph's recent efforts to extend his starters, but there are exceptions to this and Willie was faced with one here. As the TV broadcast cut to commercial after the top of the 5th, they showed Perez putting on his cap and heading up the dugout steps, and I thought "uh oh." Perez had thrown I believe 102 pitches to this point, almost half of them balls. He had already walked 7. Joe Smith was warming and presumably ready in the pen. Smith should have started the 6th.
How many steps are there in a demise, and what number step is the vote of confidence?
Posted by: GravediggerHebner | 05/25/2008 at 08:06 PM